Tag Archives: Religion
When Roger Williams was banished he set out alone into a blizzard in a harsh New England winter. He would survive to separate church and state in a brand new settlement that would become Rhode Island. Roger Williams wrote little that has survived about his 14 week winter stay in the wilderness of New England. The resulting absence of fact has led to a plethora of theories. There are many alternatives to the one in the novel Rekindled. What we do…..
In 1644 when Roger Williams returned from England with a charter for his New England colony providing for an experiment in toleration, it was still a small experiment watched but not admired. He has instituted the separation of church and state but his civil government was weak, his colony impoverished, and success was not certain. In the end, religious freedom did not spread back to England as he’d hoped for fear of Catholicism. Parliament blocked measure after measure put forward…..
Rekindled Chapter 1 opens with HH’s story as if it is certain who he was. That certainty is fiction. What is known is that the introductions to Roger Williams’s book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution opens with HH’s writing, and Roger Williams asserted that it came out of Newgate prison. The introduction is clearly meant as an inspiration for what follows in the book: a rational for the separation of church and state. Because the text of HH’s writing showed…..
Roger stood in the 1600’s for life and liberty. Since the 1700’s we’ve believed in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The goal of happiness may spawn from an increased focus on the individual, a focus that took a big step forward with Christ’s recognition of each soul as valuable. However individualism did not fully flower until after Roger Williams was gone. It seems now that happiness has overtaken life and liberty as the most sacrosanct goal. If we…..
Who would have thought Donald Trump would best embody a principle Roger Williams stood for in a one liner in 2015? “ I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct…” Donald Trump in the Republican debate 8/7/15 as reported by TIME He is the 133rd richest person on the nation according to Forbes as quoted by TIME. Roger was never rich. The Donald has more in common with William Coddington — a wealthy man who wanted to be…..
When I was an engineer, my mentor told me I had to choose. I could either get things done or I could take credit for getting things done. There is simply not time be the best at both. It seemed incredibly unfair at the time, but all my subsequent experience showed that I was better off getting things done and pairing up with people who wanted to spend time getting credit (they usually shared credit anyway — at a fraction of the…..